Chapter 21 – Corvus
CORVUS
M y phone screen blared with missed texts and calls, dropped off in the private dressing room by Maxine sometime during the show. She was fucking lucky she wasn’t here or I might have had to murder someone tonight.
I slammed the phone down, wincing when I heard the distinct sound of the screen cracking.
Wasn’t this what I wanted?
I knew writing that song with the help of the guys and deciding to perform it would mean having to tell her the truth eventually. Eventually being the key fucking word. Not yet. Not right now.
I thought I had at least until it was recorded and released to make sure this was the right call. I had to know I could trust her first. This wasn’t gang secrets. This was my secret. One my brothers helped me keep.
Would she help me keep it, or would she use it against me? I hated not knowing the answer.
A door down the hall outside opened, slamming into a wall.
“Corvus!” Ava Jade roared, her voice muffled through the heavy steel door of the room, almost drowned out by the still screaming fans out on the concert venue floor.
Another door opened. Another roar. “ Corvus! ”
Fuck.
I went to the door, with no other choice. If she kept calling my name, my very fucking distinct name, she was going to blow my damned cover. But when I got to my door, the handle was ripped from my fingers and the panel of steel flew open.
“ You !” She seethed, breathing heavily. Her mascara smudged around her eyes. Her teeth bared.
So many roiling emotions in her eyes I couldn’t peg down any particular one.
It was like she was forcing herself to look at me against her own will.
Making herself see me through the skeleton makeup still mostly intact on my face.
Through the white contacts covering my ice blue eyes and the dark hair paint making my hair appear black.
My stomach clenched, fists balling as we stared at one another in a silent standoff for what could’ve only been a few seconds but felt like minutes. Or even hours.
I waited for the attack I knew was coming, resigning myself to stand there and take it, confident she wouldn’t kill me. Maybe that confidence was misplaced, but the lyric rang true. If I would burn for anyone, it would be for her. I’d burn away just for her to be reborn from my ashes.
When she came for me, I stiffened, closing my eyes to accept my punishment for stealing her voice. For lying and hiding this part of myself from her. For everything.
But, when her claws dug into the skin at the nape of my neck, yanking me down to her, there was no killing blow.
She crushed her mouth to mine in a feral kiss, sharp nails biting down into soft flesh so deeply that I felt blood welling from the half moon cuts she was digging into me.
But I wasn’t focused on that. If anything, that pain only added to the perfection of it.
Of her lips on mine.
A growl rose in my throat and she moaned in response, making something tug loose in my chest. The growl louder now as I gripped her around her waist, lifting her to my height. Her legs went around my hips, and she fisted her free hand in my hair, pulling and twisting sharply against my scalp.
When her tongue pushed between my lips, I couldn’t inhale her fast enough.
I hadn’t kissed a girl, or been kissed by a girl, in years.
Fucked, sure.
Sucked off, often.
But this was a line I didn’t cross.
Hadn’t wanted to.
Until now.
My tongue warred with hers and her next moan almost sent me over the edge of control. Her shirt tore open at the back, ripped apart by my hands. She gasped, and I swallowed the sound, devouring her, body and soul.
“You’re a fucking asshole,” she whispered harshly between kisses, redoubling her efforts to cut me with her claws.
I grunted, twisting my neck to push into the bite of them.
“Never claimed to be anything else,” I muttered, and she kissed me again before I could finish, tilting her hips forward so that my rock-hard cock pressed against her heat. Too many layers of fabric between us.
“I hate you.”
“I hate you right back.”
But that wasn’t true anymore, was it. I hated that I wanted her. I hated that I recognized in her someone who could not just withstand me, but fit into the mold with me to be reformed as something new. Improved.
Twice as lethal and twice as strong.
It’d been there from the start, her spark. I thought it would be the end of us, but I was wrong. She was the ember that would ignite us, spurring us into a forest fire that would eat all our enemies away, render them to ashes. We would burn together.
She was the catalyst we’d been waiting for.
My Sparrow reached down between us, pulling and tearing at my dark denim jeans, trying to get my cock free and failing miserably. Even just the brush of her fingers there made me convulse with need.
I thrust her against the wall, no, the mirror, and it cracked.
The narrow shelf beneath was covered in pots of dark and light makeup and I bent, clutching her to me to swipe everything onto the floor before dropping her on the ledge of the high shelf, pulling her shirt the rest of the way off to reveal a threadbare bra beneath.
We’d have to fix that.
I curled my index finger beneath the connective bit of cloth between her tits and ripped hard, the whole thing coming free with barely any force.
Her nipples were so hard for me. Breasts swollen and perky and begging to be worshipped.
“You’re going to pay for that,” she hissed, clutching the ledge of the shelf to keep from being pulled off. My dark makeup smudged all over her cheeks and down the slope of her nose.
“That’s the plan.”
A tentative smirk played at the edge of her mouth, and I kissed it, breathing in her scent.
So sweet but with a smooth edge like fresh tobacco smoke or musk.
I couldn’t get enough of that smell. It was why I kept one of her shirts in the top drawer of my dresser, the urge to steal it having come over me in a way that I’d never experienced before.
I just knew that I wanted something of hers .
To touch when I wanted. To breathe in when I wanted. A part of her that I could control.
I sighed as the drug of her settled into my veins, getting me high.
Nothing beat the real thing.
Her fingers were surer now when they reached for the front of my jeans, jerking me closer. The top button popping easily now. The zipper racing down.
Fuck.
I gripped her hand, stopping her, and her lips froze on mine before pulling away.
“There won’t be any going back after this,” I warned her, unable to look her in the eyes. It was the truth, and she deserved to be able to make this call.
If we crossed this line, she would belong to me, and I would never let her go.
I could feel the beast in me swelling, taking over. Promising a possession so fierce there was no way I’d ever temper it. No point in even fighting it. She would be mine.
Ours.
She reached forward and clutched my chin, dragging my gaze up to hers. My nostrils flared as I let her see the agony there. The pain I kept pushed down so deep that sometimes I could forget it was even there.
It was, though. Always had been. I didn’t think there could ever be anyone I could share that with. Nor anyone else I could want to be responsible for aside from my chosen family.
But I would do it for her. If she would have me.
Please have me.
Her jaw clenched, and I braced for rejection, pulling my face from her hand, but she didn’t let me go so easily.
“I don’t make promises I can’t keep,” she said. “And a big part of me still wants to slit your throat…”
I snorted.
“But there’s a bigger part that…” She trailed off, and the hope taking root in my chest hurt more than any pain ever could.
“I understand now,” she said instead of finishing the thought, wading into safer territory. “I don’t like it, and I haven’t forgiven you.”
Despite myself, I flinched, my teeth grinding.
“I want to, though.”
“You do?”
“I think so.”
I let out a shaky breath and put my forehead to hers, watching her eyelids flutter closed at the contact. “I can’t promise to be better. I’m broken, Sparrow.”
“So am I.”
“No, you don’t understand. I’ll always be broken .”
There was only silence in reply, and I watched everything I wanted vanish against the backs of my eyelids, but then she spoke.
“If this is broken, then I don’t want to be fixed.”
She finished freeing my cock with a flick of her fingers, and I groaned as she took it into her hands, stroking the silky length of it gently at first, then she gripped it tight, and I grunted again, eyes flying open.
“Now, fuck me, Bone Man , or I’ll go find someone who will.”
My beast growled with possessiveness at her threat, but she didn’t have to ask me twice. She’d made her decision. Now, she was mine.
I thrust into her palm, pushing my fingers into her hair to tug her head to the side, putting my teeth to her throat.
I scraped them down the length of it to the nape of her neck and bit down, tasting her on my tongue, marking her for everyone to see.
She shivered at the pain, and I pressed between her legs, knocking them aside to put my cock flush against her panties.
Her wet panties. She was drenched. Practically dripping for me, and I shuddered as her wetness soaked through, making the slip of my cock against them feel like a fucking dream.
“Panties,” she panted, nails digging into my back, the word a plea.
I bit her again, resisting the urge to tie her up. Tie her down. Force her to her knees and tell her she was a good girl as I pushed my cock down her throat. Not yet. Not this time.
Not our first time.
“ Patience .”
“Fuck that.”
She reached between us and tore her own panties off, tightening her legs around my waist to impale herself on me.
My glutes tightened, pushing me in deeper on instinct alone as Ava Jade held herself there, adjusting to me.
And it was an adjustment. There was a reason the few girls I’d brought to bed in Thorn Valley liked to call me their Mount Everest. A summiting that could just as easily end in victory as it could in tears.
“ Jesus fuck ,” Sparrow said breathily against the skin below my ear, breathing heavily, and I smiled into her hair.
I started to move, aching to feel her clench around me as I withdrew and thrust back in, but she whimpered, clawing up my back.
“I can stop.”
“Don’t you fucking dare.”
My smile widened.
The kind of smile only she knew how to drag out of me.
“As you wish,” I teased and flattened a palm against her chest, forcing her to retract her claws and return to clutching the ledge of the shelf. I wanted to watch her.
My Sparrow squirmed as I grabbed her thighs, spreading her wider for me as I withdrew and thrust back in with a stuttered groan.
She tipped her head back, letting herself be consumed by the sensations, moaning in a way that was driving me slowly to madness.
She was so fucking tight.
“Just like that,” she said in a breath as I picked up the pace, pumping into her hard enough to rock the whole shelf she was seated on. To make the cracks in the mirror behind her head spider out, erasing the reflected image of me from view.
“Is this what you want?” I asked, my upper lip curling as I fucked her harder.
“ Yes .”
She tipped her hips up for me, allowing me even deeper. So deep she could barely catch her breath.
“That’s a good girl,” I cooed, releasing one thigh to grip the side of her face, forcing her to look at me. I wanted to see her ecstasy. Needed her to know that this meant the end of everything. And the beginning.
“ Fuck , Corvus,” she whimpered, unclenching one hand from the shelf’s ledge to rub her greedy little clit, eyes boring into mine. The sight of her touching herself while I slammed into her almost sent me over the edge, and I had to shut my eyes, slow my breathing.
What was she doing to me?
I truly was coming undone. All my carefully erected walls coming down. The cement blocks of my control crumbling to fucking dust.
Dangerous.
Incredible.
Terrifying.
“Fuck, I’m going to come,” she announced, and I bit down, my own orgasm shuddering down the length of my cock.
I dropped my head and pulled a pebbled nipple into my mouth, making her back arch as I bit down on it, forcing her to that summit before I hit it first.
She cried out as her orgasm took her, her convulsions milking my cock of everything it had to give. The sound of my own release mixing with hers.
A loud chink was the only warning that the shelf was going down, and I was almost too slow to catch her before she fell, rolling myself to take the brunt of the fall with my jeans tangled around my ankles so that she could land on my chest, my cock popping free of her cunt.
A little squeal left her lips as she landed hard on my chest, knocking the air from my lungs. Makeup pots and brushes jammed into my back, and I groaned, coughing to get a full breath.
She rolled off and our gazes met.
Then, she laughed.
A laugh that started deep in her belly and reverberated up through her throat, filling the whole room with its musical sound.
I laughed too, the sound foreign as it found its way past my lips. Deep and rich.
She kicked my leg as though it were my fault we broke the fucking shelf, and I kicked her right back, laughing harder.
She swiped a tear from her eye and sat up, looking around at the state of the room. At the state of us.
“We’re a fucking mess,” she said.
“You are,” Grey announced, and as one, our heads swiveled to the door, finding Grey standing there leaning against the doorframe with Becca next to him, covering her mouth with both hands, eyes wide as she took in her friend.
“Sorry!” Becca chirped and turned around, striding away from the door. I guessed she was one more person to add to the list of those that now knew my best kept secret. That was a problem. I glared at Grey, deciding to deal with him later.
“I was wondering when you were going to show up,” Ava Jade said to Grey. “Ten minutes earlier and you could have joined us.”